Key dates

March 23, 2010 – City Council approves medical marijuana regulations, capping the number of collectives.

October 2011 – State court rules Long Beach can't regulate the drug.

February 2012 – Council votes to ban collectives outright.

September 2013 – Council decides to draft a new ordinance to allow collectives.

Key dates

March 23, 2010 – City Council approves medical marijuana regulations, capping the number of collectives.

October 2011 – State court rules Long Beach can't regulate the drug.

February 2012 – Council votes to ban collectives outright.

September 2013 – Council decides to draft a new ordinance to allow collectives.

Marijuana is often called a gateway drug; in Long Beach, it appears to be a gateway into politics.

Well before they declared their candidacies for public office, four political hopefuls turned themselves into the face of medical marijuana advocacy in Long Beach. Frustrated with the city’s attempts to allow medical marijuana dispensaries, they now hope to take matters into their own hands by winning seats on the City Council or as the city attorney.

Along the way, they’re going to keep medical pot in the political discussion, they said.

The candidates include Jason Aula, the executive director of the city’s National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws chapter and the force behind a medical marijuana petition drive that’s snared by legal issues. He wants to fill the District 1 council seat in the downtown area.

Carl Kemp, a lobbyist that helped shaped the city’s ongoing medical marijuana debate while representing medical marijuana collectives, is running for District 5 in East Long Beach.

Larry King, a businessman who tried to open a dispensary but lost out when the city’s regulations were squashed by a federal court, is vying to replace Councilman James Johnson in District 7, which is centered on Bixby Knolls.

King’s lawyer in a lawsuit against the city, Matt Pappas, is running for city attorney. He approaches medical marijuana access as a civil rights issue, and he has represented other marijuana clients in Long Beach and other cities.

The group is poised to keep medical marijuana policy a prominent topic leading into the April 8 primary.

“I haven’t run for political office before,” Pappas said. “But sometimes what we have to do is like a calling, and sometimes you feel like you need to address the issue.”

They mostly know each other as advocates, and at least three of them knew of the others’ plans to run before they officially announced their candidacy, they said in interviews last week.

King said the city’s lottery process for marijuana collective permits, and the frustrations that came from it, made him politically active and introduced him to a lot of the players in the medical marijuana field.

King won one of 32 permits offered in the lottery, paid the city tens of thousands of dollars in fees and invested even more, only to see his plans vaporize when a federal court ruled the city’s regulations were illegal because they clashed with federal drug laws. So, he sued the city.

“It seemed that everyone was dropping the political discontent in my lap,” he said.

Aula’s discontent is also tied to that failed lottery. He has been a key player in creating a ballot measure that would bring medical marijuana to the city and require dispensaries to follow rules similar to regulations posed before, but his petition drive has hit its own roadblock. City Clerk Larry Herrera says that the petition doesn’t have enough signatures to allow for a special election. The petition’s organizers suggested putting their proposal on a regular ballot instead, but Herrera said he can’t legally allow it there either.

Kemp, who didn’t return several calls seeking comment, is the outsider of the four. The others said that they know him and respect and largely agree with his efforts, but as a lobbyist for the Long Beach Collective Association, he’s a hired gun and is in the debate for reasons that are different than their own.

The other three candidates said that they are driven by the needs of patients, while Kemp is more tied to the interests of collectives.

Collectives are certainly an important part of the medical pot world, and it’s important that in the future the city does not have any other unsuccessful policies, King said.

“They hurt a lot of patients. They hurt a lot of businesses,” he said.

He added: “I’m the only candidate that has a background in the dispensary business. The others were affiliated. I feel that I have a connection to the patients as an advocate and I have a connection to what’s left to the dispensary business in this town. I feel I have a special obligation and a special connection to that industry, and I can be helpful as a conduit.”

Aula, King and Pappas are talking about coordinating their get-out-the-vote and registration efforts and other campaign operations. For example, Pappas and Aula already worked together on campaign committee registration paperwork.

“We’ve been plugged in together,” Aula said. “A lot of people say we roll the same way in politics, and how we call people out and we have very similar beliefs.”

But they aren’t collaborating on their medical marijuana messages, and with five months until the primary they, like most other candidates, haven’t fully refined their platforms anyway.

But they have some issues they say that they plan to bring up.

For one, they want to makes sure that seriously ill people have access to medical marijuana and that there’s a clear, fair and practical set of rules for dispensaries. They also plan to address how law enforcement handles marijuana arrests.

An analysis by the Long Beach Register last month of Long Beach Police Department data showed that police disproportionately arrest black people on marijuana charges. Furthermore, Long Beach has the third most marijuana arrests in the state, outpacing larger cities.

For now, though, Aula, King and Pappas are mostly getting their political bearings.

Besides medical marijuana, King ran as a protest against Johnson, but King said he is trying to figure out the direction of his campaign now that Johnson isn’t trying to retain his seat but to become city attorney instead.

Pappas, while very concerned about medical pot, also wants to make sure that as city attorney he not only looks out for the city government’s interests, but also for citizens, he said. For example, if the city harms a person, it shouldn’t be as concerned with protecting itself as much as it should be with fixing any problems and making a person whole again, he said.

Aula, a Republican, said he’s trying to find his strongest political base; he thought it was going to be from other members of his party, but he said he’s found that medical marijuana advocates are his biggest ally.

He’s not upset about it, and it may actually turn out to be a good thing, he said.

“I can say that there are a lot of people in the medical marijuana set who are ready to knock on doors and give money,” Aula said.

Jason Aula

District 1 candidate

Profession: Political consultant.

Ties to medicinal marijuana: He is the director of the city’s National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and organized a petition drive to create a medical marijuana referendum.

Other campaign issues: Create an education policy that allows for the removal of teachers and administrators at low-performing schools; illegal immigration.

Ties to medicinal marijuana: He has represented dispensaries in their efforts to open in Long Beach.

Other campaign issues: Kemp didn’t return several requests for comment.

Running Against: Joseph Luyben, Stacy Mungo, Thomas Sutfin

Larry King

District 7 candidate

Profession: Businessman

Ties to medicinal marijuana: He was introduced to medical marijuana through his mother, a cancer patient. He subsequently started a collective and went through the city’s lottery process, but was eventually shut down.

Other issues: He is concerned about lead poisoning related to aviation fuel at the airport.

Running against: Roberto Uranga, Joan Greenwood, Teer Strickland

Matt Pappas

city attorney candidate

Profession: Attorney

Ties to medicinal marijuana: He has represented several patients in legal battles for access to medical marijuana, and he currently represents King in a suit against the city.

Other issues: He’s interested in having police officers wear video cameras to reduce complaints against their behavior. He also believes that the city should settle more suits than wage costly legal battles.

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.